1. Purge your vocabulary of non-existent words.  Very few of us use the word Gooder, right?  That’s because gooder is not a word.  Neither is ain’t, irregarless, and nah.
2. Fix your poor pronunciation.  This one is hard for me.  The word is nu-clear not Nuke-u-ler.  It’s across the street, not acrossed the street.  And many more.
3. Eliminate double negatives.  If you “don’t got none” then you must have got some.  Honestly, ain’t nothing gonna’ make you look more stupid than a double negative.
4. Learn to use the correct word.  Learn the difference between Affect and Effect (more).
5. Eliminate misused phases.  “I could care less” for example.  If you could care less, then that implies that you care more than one might expect.   “Suppose to” is incorrect, it’s supposed to be “supposed to”.
6. Avoid slang.  Know your audience.  Limit slang as much as possible.
7. Avoid verbal tics.  Again, know your audience.  Avoid “Um… Dude, can I like maybe possibly get a copy of that” in the workplace.
8. Avoid Cursing.  We all do it.  Reserve it for when it is necessary.  Using the F-word every other sentence in a meaningless manner just doesn’t fuckin’ sound right.
9. Don’t over do it by eliminating contractions.  Contractions are a normal and acceptable part of the English language.  “I’m”, “You’re”, and “can’t”, are all good.  If you walk around saying “I am going to lunch now” you look like you are trying too hard to sound intelligent.  Either that or you’re a robot (because somehow super-intellgent robots can’t learn to use contractions).
10. Don’t use words that exceed your vocabulary.  If a short word fits what you are trying to say, say it.  Don’t throw in a long word just because it sounds decorous.

Even the most educated among us will violate these rules very often.  The key is three steps: (1-5) eliminate completely errors in your speech, (6-8) know your audience and level of formality required, (9-10) don’t over extend yourself.

Some time ago I bought a used 32″ wide screen LCD HDTV/Monitor that I planned on using as my primary TV.  However, my wife prefers our tiny 27″ SDTV CRT.  So I now use the 32″ HDTV for my gaming monitor.  The best thing about this TV is it has several AV inputs, including standard Audio Video, HDTV YCbCr, and PC VGA.  So I’m able to connect all my gaming machines at the same time (well except for my N64 that has been put into storage).

If you can’t tell from the picture below I have a PS2 (the really old thick one), a Wii, and a cheap PC all hocked up to the TV.  The PS2 controllers and Wii controllers are wireless.  Unfortunately, my GameCube controller for the Wii is wired.  The PS2 has a HD installed that allows me to load games without swapping disks using HDAdvance (super fast loading is sweet).   The PC boots directly into the AdvancedMENU front end for MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator).  An X-Arcade Dual is connected to the PC for “authentic” arcade play.  There is a power strip in the back that powers on/off the entire system.

The TV is sitting on two wooden drawers from a discarded desk (I know, it’s a little low class but it works).  This leaves the TV pretty close to the ground but most of the time my son and I are sitting on the rug in front so it works out ok.  The rug helps me keep my son at a safe eye-friendly distance.  He knows that if he is off the rug the game gets turned off.

The nice thing about this setup is that when it is not in use it is pretty compact.  All the consoles fit nicely between the drawers.  The cabinet on the left stores all my games and accessories.

Best of all my son loves it!

Thanks to Patrick Pattamanuch for the great photos.

My new GameznFlix.com subscription

My New PSP

My new Siemens SX66

CakePHP rocks!

My 2 year old son rocks more

I gave my wife a Christmas gift from eLuxury.com, something I thought she world really like.  eLuxery.com, in case you didn’t know, is the only official Louis Vuitton online vendor in North America.  I did my research… all those online stores claiming to be selling authentic LV at half the price are fake.  Surprisingly some of the sites selling fake LV products were very well made… just goes to show you in these days you can no longer trust a company by their website.  Well, anyway I purchased an authentic LV product and gave it to my wife.  Soon after giving it too her I filled out the forms and made a trip to the post office to return said Christmas gift.  Some people are never pleased.  I gave my son a talking pooh bear that appears to have problems telling time.  He has a tendency to say “I do love dinner” at 2am.  Two strikes this Christmas.

I installed WordPress 2.0.  I was initially upset when I discovered it was broken.  Luckily after spending few minutes I managed to fix it and submitted a bug report and had my fix incorporated into the WordPress core.  I also modified the WordPress core files to make the post preview optional.  I only look at the post preview a few times why do I need to waste bandwidth and server time on something I’m not using.  I was hoping I could make this into a plugin but I don’t see any easy way to do that so I submitted it as a feature request.

I posted my fix to the WordPress bug here so I can help others having the same issue but not willing to search the official bug database. I didn’t like the way the php code looked so I modified an existing WordPress plugin to use the GeSHi Generic Syntax Highlighter to provide syntax highlighting.  I was tempted to use the iG:Syntax Hiliter but I wanted more control and besides it is not yet compatible with WordPress 2.0.  If I’m satisfied with this final product I may release it publicly.

I went to FilePlanet to sign up for the free World of Warcraft trail.  Spent 20 minutes signing up for a fileplant account.  50 minutes waiting in the download queue to start  downloading.  Left the room for a few hours (at least two) while the file was transferring.  Spent 10 minutes unziping the files, 20 minutes installing, and 30 minutes creating a World of Warcraft account (cumulative time so far: 4+ hours).  Then I proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes getting bored with the game.  Amazingly I spent another 6 hours or so forcing myself to play more so I can discover what all the hype was about.  Answer: 3 minute gryphon rides across the skies of Azeroth make it all worth it (well it was free).

I worked on my Xinha Here Firefox extension.  I added the ability to open Xinha in a sidebar or a bottom bar.  I’m still working on a few issues with missing context menus so it hasn’t been posted yet.  I posted a detailed description of my issues to the MozillaZine forum through which I never have received any help. I also added some extra features like recovery of previous text and saving and loading the HTML from a file.  These are both features that can only work because Xinha Here is running in a privileged mode in your browser.  Any other ideas out there?

In response to a post to my forum that Xinha Here did not work in Firefox 1.5 on Linux I installed FF 1.5 in my browser appliance virtual machine thanks the the instructions here.  I was pleased that everything seams to run fin in FF 1.5 on Linux.  Turns out there was an issue with the users browser not Xinha Here.  

Modified my Firefox installation page to make it more clear that you need to add hypercubed.com to the allowed domains list.  Hopefully this will cut off some of the “can’t install your extension” e-mails.  Unfortunately, it lead to one “I can’t download your extension at all” email that made me realize I broke the link to the extension.  Sorry about that.  It is amazing that I can receive so much traffic but nobody reports this error for 24 hours.

Had my server go down in the middle of drafting this post.  Requiring me to start all over but giving me the great idea for an auto-recovery feature for future versions of Xinha Here. What’s that phrase “necessity is the mother of invention“?  Everything I make is because I need it.  That is what distinguishes me from a professional programmer.  Which in turn means that I will never make any money.  By the way the amount of money that I have earned through PayPal donations and advertisement revenue for Xinha Here: $2… thank you Filip!

I was very unhappy to be late on my last links of the week for the year thanks to above mentioned server issues.

So I think you will agree that while I did many things during the break the most appropriate answer is still… “nothing”. Maybe for a lucky few they will get “read my blog”.

In Memory of Dr. Yian Chang
1965 – 2005

A great man, a great physicist, and a great friend.  You will be missed by many.

Ok, so now that mention of my MapPoint post has fallen off the list at http://msdn.microsoft.com/mappoint/ my web traffic has returned to normal (10-15 visits per day) and my dreams of worldwide redership have been shattered I can sit back and reflect on the whole blogging experience. Do I mind that my traffic is so low and I am basically writing to myself? No, not really. Sure it would be nice to get a few comments now and then to know if people are interested in what I have to say but it isn’t necessary. This blog gives me a way to record the interesting things I find or think about everyday. As my mind wanders so does my blog. From special relitivty to doorknobs, from hypercubes to Zelda. These are just a fraction of the random things that I think about daily.

I think that is just the way I am. My mind picks up on things an kicks it around all day long analyzing the topic from every angle my mind is capable of comprehending (often leading to insomnia). I actually had someone tell me that the stuff I talk about during lunch is too weird for them. If my lunch topics are so strange that some people don’t want to eat lunch with me then I must be saying something interesting… right? Ok, maybe not. Either way this blog serves several purposes for me:

1. it is a great way to record my random thoughts,
2. it is a terrific forum to post my discoveries, and
3. it is good writing practice.

Yes, like everyone else and their half-sister-in-law I would like to be a writer. I no longer have fantasies of becoming the next Asimov or Nevin but I sure would like to write one science fiction novel before I go. Tips number one, two, and three for becoming a writer are practice, practice, and practice. Maybe with a little work I can learn to avoid run-on sentences (there are a couple in this post), fix my atrocious grammar, and perhaps through some miracle improve my vocabulary. Is that expecting to much from a blog? Probably, but at least I’m doing something.

So what is in the future for the Hypercubed blog? I’m not sure. I’m defiantly not going to promise a new post everyday. Blogging takes work and while I’m blogging I’m neglecting my other projects. I hope that in the future I can balance my blogging and my programming and, hopefully, you will see me post about some of my programming projects here.

Related Lnks:

• Flat Land – by Edwin A. Abbott